"You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in." — Arlo Guthrie

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Mardi Gras, Phallic Monuments and Bowling

I found a very interesting blog called Babylon Daily, written by a man calling himself LKN4TRUTH. His profile tells that he was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, then turned away from all religion when his father quit his corporate job to become a SDA minister. "I divorced myself from my church," he writes, "and ultimately from my God." After ten years apostate from his faith, he found it again on 9/11.

Since 2001, he seems to have become a student of the Bible and the Torah.

What caught my eye about his blog was his article about why he refused his friend's invitation to attend a Mardi Gras-themed bowling event. He said it would violate his religious beliefs.

His rather interesting explanation for this begins with ancient Babylonian history. He relates the murder and subsequent chopping into little pieces of Nimrod and how his wife/sister Simiramus found all the pieces but one, his phallus, and puts him back together again. She then has a massive pillar, a tower, built to remind the people of his power and that now Nimrod has become the Sun God. This tower was the Tower of Babel (Babylon).

Simiramus becomes magickly pregnant with Nimrod's seed, and gives birth to a new sun god who is also a man. The son, Dammuz (later Tammuz) is worshipped by the people as the earthly manifestation of his father Nimrod.

Our blogmaster says that eventually the building of these pillars, or shafts, spread across the world, representing the people's honoring of the Sun God's power. Even today, we have obelisks and shafts standing erect across the world. One well known one is in Washington, D.C., called the Washington Monument. Ancient Egyptian obelisks have been relocated to New York and Paris.

Tammuz was eventually tortured and brutally murdered by being hung from a cross. He was buried and rose from the dead after three days to become the savior of the world.

LKN4TRUTH goes on:

Every year, 40 days prior to the anniversary of his crucifixion, the pagans would weep for Tammuz and deny themselves things like food and water to show their mourning for the crucified savior. At the end of the 40 days, after the solemn remembrance of his crucifixion, they would celebrate the resurrected Tammuz with joy and elation on the festival of Ashtoreth (also known as the festival of Esther, and known today as Easter).

The Biblical book of Ezekiel, chapter 8, verse 14 tells of a mourning ceremony of Tammuz going on in the Temple. Ezekiel is believed to have been written between 593-560 B.C.

LKN4TRUTH continues:

So along comes the Catholic church and they see all of the pagans weeping for Tammuz for 40 days leading up to his death and celebrating his resurrection afterwards on the festival of Esther. They logically say, "HEY! This story of Tammuz looks a lot like our story about Jesus and there is no way we are going to get all these people to stop celebrating the festival of Esther since now it's practically a huge orgy celebration and hey, people just like that sort of thing." So, the church came up with a brilliant idea. Let's incorporate the pagan festival of Tammuz/Esther and make it "Christian." And with that idea the church declared the 40 days leading up to Easter to be called "lent" and required people to "give something up for lent." It was a period of mourning for their soon to be fallen savior that all of the pagans worshipping Tammuz would be able to appreciate and celebrate with them. At the end of the mourning period they will both also celebrate Esther (Easter) together and everyone will be happy as clams (or bunnies, I'm not sure about that one).

But the people never really liked the idea of giving something for lent... not even ANYTHING. I mean the church made it easy by not telling you specifically what you have to give up for lent. If it's too hard to quit drinking booze then just give up chewing gum for 40 days... hey, whatever works best for you and won't require very much from you. But no, the people still think giving something up (ANYTHING up) is too oppressive. So, they insist that they have a HUGE party of drunken debauchery just before they have to be "good" for a while. So we invent Fat Tuesday, a day when we can just drink till we puke, have s*xual relations with anyone and anything we want, and just generally be as evil as possible before for a whole whopping 40 days we are supposed to be "good" and give SOMETHING up. But hey, that's wasn't enough. Only one day to be drunk and have wild s*x with sheep and other farm animals? You must be joking! So let's make it a whole week long event of drunken orgies and let's have men dress as women and women dress as men and make giant golden calves and dance around it half naked (that by the way is something they do at Mardi Gras regularly). GREAT! Everything sounds a lot better now.

So ok, now the question comes up, "Hey, why won't you come celebrate Mardi Gras with us?" "Hmmm," I say, "It JUST might be a violation of my religious beliefs."

Much of the story of Nimrod, Semiramis/Ishtar and Tammuz also appears on the Judaic Christian website of Yeshua Ha'Mashiach Ministries. It's also interesting to read the biblical book of Esther and seeing the paralleles to Ishtar.

I find the Tammuz story very interesting for many reasons. Seeing how the god is mentioned in Ezekiel drives home the points that Judaism and Christianity didn't exist in a vacuum; they were part of the bigger picture and just one (two) vectors that religiosity took at that time and place. That the story of Tammuz is so similar to that of Jesus, yet predates him AND is mentioned in the book that is about Jesus... well, it's mindboggling in some ways to ponder.

The idea of pillars / towers / shafts / phallic symbols pointing skyward is fascinating, too. The subject is well covered in a book I just finished, called "Talisman," by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. The book also discusses the sacred and celestrial geometry used in the city design of Paris, rebuilt parts of London, and Washington, D.C. The phallic Washington Monument and the feminine, breast-shaped Capitol at the other end of the Mall (map) aren't just coincidence, says the book.

Taking a Pagan holiday and interlacing it with Christian overtones was quite a common practice all the way back to Constantine. Many of Christendom's greatest structures were erected over ancient Pagan sacred sites. It is interesting to note that many of these sites are over geo-gravitational "ley" line intersections.

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